A federal trademark complaint Bell's Brewery filed in 2015 against a tiny North Carolina brewery was recently thrown out, allowing Innovation Brewing to keep its name and branding.

Bell's had said Innovation's name sounded too much like the Kalamazoo-area brewery's unregistered advertising slogan, "Bottling innovation since 1985" and could cause confusion with customers.

The David-and-Goliath tale began when Bell's filed a complaint against Innovation, which sold only about 500 barrels that year, mostly locally in Jackson County, N.C. Bell's Brewery last year planned to make roughly 450,000 barrels of beer. It distributes across most of the East Coast, including North Carolina and surrounding states.

Bell's had asked Innovation to withdraw their federal trademark application, although Bell's slogan is only used on promotional materials and doesn't show up on any of the brewery's packaging.

That seemed to figure heavily into the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's Dec. 20 decision to dismiss Bell's opposition.

The board found that the slogan in question had not been “used and/or advertised ... in connection with a single product (so) that they have come to be associated together, in the mind of the purchasing public" with Bell's products.

Both Innovation's and Bell's owners were not immediately available for comment.